


Fingering

by LadyLibertine



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, M/M, Season/Series 02 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:48:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26046796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLibertine/pseuds/LadyLibertine
Summary: Roman pines for Peter--and finds out Peter pines for him too.
Relationships: Roman Godfrey & Peter Rumancek, Roman Godfrey/Peter Rumancek
Comments: 25
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I went down a strange, COVID-19 wormhole and this came out. It's written (sorta) as a series of codas for the first half of season 2 but it's also all kinds of canon divergent--Miranda doesn't exist, the way Roman feeds/his upirism manifests is probably not accurate, etc. Enjoy the angst!

If you asked him to chart the origins of his longing, Roman wouldn’t have an answer. It was just there, anchored, from the moment he saw Peter crossing the school grounds. Unkempt, shoulders bowed beneath the shell of his leather jacket, weariness rooted someplace visceral. Roman watched him glance at the building and sigh. And then Peter turned those eyes on him—those ethereal eyes—and Roman was sunk.

It wasn’t even lust—not really. It was deeper than that, instinctual. He had long since been bored by the synthetic florals and aluminum-tinted sweat and cloying musk of hundreds of teenagers. But Roman could be at one end of a crowded corridor and catch the scent of something earthy and primal—petrichor during a spring rain, the oaky-sweetness of burning wood, sea salt ripened by a summer sun—and know Peter was near.

The bartender pulls Roman out of his reverie, shouting to be heard over the feral bass line. “What can I get ya?”

“Four fingers,” Roman mouths, taps them against the bar, the bartender already unscrewing the cap off the Glenfiddich. The music is turned up to anonymity-inducing levels—conversation indiscernible, faces even less so amidst the dim lighting and synthetic fog pumping from every vent.

He downs the double shot, motions for another, lights a cigarette. His fingers never stop tapping, plucking, vibrating. The hunger in his veins growing in direct proportion to his rage.

Peter’s back, the thought on a dizzying, merry-go-round loop. Of all the possibilities, Peter has the fucking audacity to surface after months just to ask for money. He feels bad about Lynda—Peter’s mom was nothing but kind to Roman—but it didn’t stop the twisted satisfaction in getting to reject Peter. To dismiss him like the trash Peter thought himself to be.

Roman slams his fist against the bar, the pinpoint of pain welcome yet far too brief. _Peter’s back—and it’s not for me_.

He had stood in Roman’s house and seared him with a gaze—stood there and said, “Roman—please,” his voice a whisper, his breath starting to hitch, his eyes—those fucking eyes—growing wet.

Roman could smell all of him—the must in his wrinkled jacket, the nervous perspiration under his arms, the raw earth of the wolf, the metal of his blood. He didn’t dare look down at the pulse in Peter’s neck, the vein arrowing into the fragile skin above his collarbones. He said the only thing that could save them both: “Get out of my house.”

Another double is in Roman’s fist and he can’t remember ordering it, but he swallows it anyway, savoring the burn. He tilts his chin toward the bartender—another—and the guy raises one plucked eyebrow at him. Peter slips a hundred-dollar bill onto the bar and receives no further questions.

He wishes all relationships could be that simple. That transactions of fury, of enough “fuck yous!” and attributions of blame could be finitely exchanged until the cosmic tab was paid and the feeling of betrayal spent.

Sufficiently drunk now, Roman gets up and makes his way toward the bouncer guarding the back room. He’s nodded behind the velvet rope, along the unassuming passageway, onto the service elevator, down into the bowels of the building, the bleeding heart of the dancefloor.

Though his anger has dissipated, his hunger remains—a black hole he can feel growing, consuming him day-by-day, inch-by-inch. He plucks a woman in a red dress from the fray because he can, knocks the man she’s with unconscious. He rides the adrenaline as far as his car, as far as halfway down the moonlit highway with the woman’s hand slithering between his legs as he shifts gears, when he can smell her arousal blooming, her carotid artery pulsing like neon in his periphery—and, yet, it’s all wrong.

Her scent is saccharine, sentimental. He yearns for the clarity of freshly turned soil, of mud and soot and copper.

He leaves her on the side of the road shouting obscenities at his taillights.

***

When he opens his door to find Peter on his stoop, asking about men in white masks and a little boy on a tricycle—about the dream they shared—it feels to Roman like the cruelest form of déjà vu.

Peter stammers through his explanation and Roman smells the acrimony of anxiety radiating off him. He fidgets from foot to foot as he talks, never looking Roman dead on but periodically sending a flash of ice gray from beneath his curtain of hair. Roman doesn’t just smell the wolf but feels him—percolating like quicksilver beneath the surface. It makes Roman’s senses hum.

“What do you want?” Roman interjects, turns his voice cold.

But Peter only turns soft in response. Shares a doleful, penitent look with the floor. Swallows—hard—like he’s choking on something too big to put into words. And then he says the thing Roman didn’t know he needed to hear.

“I was a coward…” Peter begins and Roman watches him flounder, watches him pause and search for something inside himself. When he looks back up, his eyes are steady. “I shouldn’t have abandoned you and I’m sorry.”

It’s like something has opened up beneath Roman’s feet—like the black hole has expanded beyond his chest—but this one, instead, is bright. This one is the shimmer of water at the bottom of an abandoned well, a distant flicker of light at the open mouth of a tunnel. This one feels like possibility.

***

Olivia seemed to weigh the truth before spitting it at him: “JR’s not your father.”

“What?”

“He didn’t have it in him.”

That time, Roman had no trouble catching the ruthless glint of his mother’s words.

“That means Letha…” The full burden of what it means hits him in phases, like frostbite spreading from the tips of each limb to pierce the muscle inside. He can’t bring himself to voice the thought—to have to admit that his daughter’s mother is his sister. One more gene-therapy session and Roman would be cured of his upirism—of his bloodlust and its violence—and yet he’d never felt more monstrous.

The bile crawling up the back of his throat has little to do with his visit to Dr. Pryce.

Though sharing visions of a masked serial killer murdering small children may not be a panacea found in the DSM, it works for Peter and Roman. Somehow, they’re friends again. So it’s not strange that he stumbles home, dazed, to find Peter in his foyer, yammering about a premonition of a boy in a t-shirt with a cartoon devil on it.

But Roman only half-registers the presence of his friend. His head is pounding, his stomach a lead weight. He brushes past Peter and makes his way gingerly up the stairs, gripping the banister with every step.

The walls of Roman’s bedroom are a deep gunmetal gray, the furniture sleek and sparse. There are no photographs on the walls or ceramic tributes to nostalgia. It is an anonymous room—anyone could live here. But the face looking back at Roman from the mirror is the same it’s always been. It’s only his insides that have been corrupted. He imagines the knowledge of what he is—of what he’s done—leaving spots like mold spores on his organs, his arteries blackening with every breath.

His forehead comes down against the glass before he realizes he’s done it, the pain barely registering. He can feel the bloodlust swelling, the craving to bite and mark and drink sweeping over him so quickly it makes him dizzy. And it’s only heightened as he smells Peter running up the stairs, crossing the threshold into his room.

“Roman—what’s going on!?” Peter glances from the shattered mirror to Roman, panic edging his voice. He takes a step toward him, but Roman holds up his hand to halt him.

Peter’s urgency smells sweet—concern laced through every molecule. Roman yearns to fold himself inside it, to sink into something warm and familiar. He wants to go back to a world he didn’t know had monsters in it, to be a dumb teenager again and share ice cream sundaes with Letha, smoke stolen cigarettes with Peter in the stairwell off the biology lab. He wants the room to stop spinning, his heart to stop thundering.

He glances at Peter.

He wants to push the hair off Peter’s face and make him laugh that laugh that makes his eyes go wide. He wants—

“You don’t want to know,” Roman replies. He turns his back on Peter and lowers himself onto the bed, leans back and closes his eyes. The dizziness and the hunger are making him feel like he’s going to wretch.

Peter takes a seat in the chair nearby. “We’re going to figure this out, Roman,” he says. “The answer is in the dreams—it’s gotta be.”

Roman says nothing. Let Peter think his despair is about something noble.

Peter continues talking, describing the image on the boy’s shirt in detail and pondering what the logo might represent. Roman can’t focus enough to follow the thread and lets himself drift instead, the rhythm of Peter’s voice soothing. It takes Roman a moment to realize he’s stopped speaking.

He blinks open his eyes and finds Peter staring at him.

“You need to feed, don’t you.” It isn’t a question.

“Wha—Peter. I’m fine. Keep talking.” He glances away, but he can feel Peter’s gaze boring through the side of his head.

“Roman,” it’s Peter’s no-shit voice. “You’re of no help to anyone like this—you can’t move, you can’t concentrate. You look like you’re either going to puke or pass out.”

“I’m. Fine.”

“No, you’re not. Do you have anything here—at home—that would help?”

Roman shakes his head. He had hoped he could break his thirst by refusing to indulge it—an addict going cold turkey. Clearly, he was wrong.

Roman’s eyes are still closed but he can feel Peter considering something, can hear his pulse quickening.

“Okay,” Peter says. “Feed on me.”

Roman’s neck snaps up so fast his vision goes black for a second. “You can’t be serious. It’d fucking kill you!”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Dude, I’m not some damsel—I’m not even human! I’ll be fine.”

Roman wants to disagree for the sheer principle of it—to see Peter’s frustration grow, the wolf flicker to the surface—but his resolve has a crack in it. Peter does make a modicum of sense. He would be better able to help them figure out how to save the kid if he didn’t feel like shit. He gives Peter a sideways glance and has to lean back against the pillows.

Who is he kidding? Once he has his hands on Peter, he doesn’t know if he could get himself to stop. What if he hurt him? Or, worse, what if it cements his lust and love into something irrevocable—makes him crave Peter even more?

“I can’t fucking think!” Roman gasps to himself, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Then let me help,” Peter says quietly. He’s moved from the chair to the edge of Roman’s bed, the mattress dipping below his bent leg.

Peter’s scent is pungent—raw and loamy and vibrant, like it’s been set to boil. Roman forces himself to sit up.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Peter.”

Peter flashes him a grin, canines showing. “You won’t.” He holds Roman’s gaze as he tilts his head to the side and hooks a finger into the worn collar of his t-shirt, tugs until the full line of his neck is exposed.

It’s like a cork popping—an explosion of scent and sound that hits Roman like a furnace blast. He leans forward and rests one hand gently on Peter’s shoulder, the other holding the side of his face. In the pause before he presses his lips to Peter’s skin—when he can’t ignore the heat of it beneath his fingers or the arousal beginning to pool in his stomach like warm treacle—he realizes their hearts are beating in sync, the rhythm looping a closed circuit between them.

He has enough presence of mind to sink his teeth into a spot just below the jut of Peter’s neck (something he can easily hide beneath a shirt collar) and Peter gasps, a sound of surprise or maybe pain, but it makes Roman’s cock twitch, spurs him over the cliff-edge and down the rabbit hole, to bite down properly and taste.

It is every sinful and glorious thing—barrel-aged whiskey and early morning cigarettes, sour candy melting against his back molars, fat grapes right off the vine, a clean line of cocaine and salt-licked skin. His fingers knot in Peter’s hair as he angles his head back further, the tendons in Peter’s neck taut as guitar strings. His other hand moves to rest on the center of Peter’s back, pulling him flush against Roman’s chest.

This close, Roman can’t distinguish Peter’s scent from his own. He feels dizzy, intoxicated, his cock swelling as his right hand dips down instinctively, presses Peter closer still. He wants to luxuriate in this moment, suspend it from the ceiling like one of Nadia’s mobiles and gorge himself on it. He—

Roman can feel the instant Peter’s heart begins to slow. Every instinct in his body tells him to keep drinking—to feed down to the marrow, feel bone against his lips—but this is Peter. The reminder alone enough to get his jaw to unlock, to pull back and sit up.

Peter’s unconscious, his head sagging against Roman’s left hand, but his pulse is steady. He lowers Peter onto the bed, nestling his head against the pillows. He takes a deep breath, quiets the desire to lick the blood still trickling from Peter’s open wound through sheer force of will. Instead, he grabs a discarded towel off the floor and folds it against Peter’s neck, his thumb resting against Peter’s pulse point.

Sitting on the edge of his own bed, knees indenting Peter’s right thigh, Roman thinks how strangely intimate it feels watching someone sleep—seeing who they are with no artifice to hide behind. With his eyes closed—without that haunting gaze—Peter looks so fragile: shadows like bruises under his eyes, the blue of his veins visible beneath papery-thin skin. It makes him wonder who they could have been if they’d never been infected with their ancestors’ sins. If they’d gotten to just be Peter and Roman and didn’t have to keep saving a town that would never save them.

He watches Peter until long after the bleeding has stopped.

***

Roman jolts awake, his bleary mind chasing a dream he already can’t remember. He glances at the clock and it flashes 2am back. He has no recollection of falling asleep, but he feels sated. A pleasant hum thrums through him, coaxing him back to sleep. If he didn’t have to piss he’d sink right into it. He closes his eyes, but a muffled sigh beside him startles him into alertness. One glance at Peter curled on his side, breathing deeply, and the night comes back to him.

He watches Peter for a beat, the steady rise and fall of his chest quieting something unspoken inside Roman, before standing and padding to the bathroom. He takes his time, splashes some water on his face. When he reenters his bedroom he’s surprised to find Peter standing in front of the full-length mirror.

Peter’s got one finger hooked into his shirt collar, gaze fixed on the reflection of the mark Roman left behind. The skin over the bite mark has stitched itself back together, but Roman can make out the twin red dots where his fangs had sunk in.

Peter makes no indication he’s seen Roman, but he knows Peter can smell him as surely as Roman can smell Peter. Instead, Roman watches, transfixed, as Peter rubs his thumb back and forth across the wound, a soft hiss escaping his lips. Then Peter’s thumb pauses, at the heart of the mark, and pushes down.

It’s like a pressure relief valve opening. Peter exhales a startled gasp, his eyes widening, his mouth rounding into an “O” of surprise. All the blood in Roman’s head drains south as he smells Peter’s hormone levels rising, pheromones exploding into the air like fireworks. Before he realizes he’s decided to, he’s moved from the doorway and directly behind Peter. When their eyes meet in the mirror over Peter’s shoulder, the broken glass from where Roman smashed it kaleidoscoping their gaze so dozens of Romans and Peters stare back, he feels a primal release inside him—the weight of something great and terrifying taking flight.

Roman pulls Peter’s wrists down with one quick motion, transfers them both into the grip of his left hand. He presses them into the small of Peter’s back as his right hand rests flat against Peter’s belly, long fingers slipping under the hem of his t-shirt to seek the secret skin beneath.

Peter feels molten against his hand, the heat radiating off him in waves so strong Roman has a fleeting image of his fingerprints branded into Peter’s skin.

Peter’s heartbeat thunders—a mirror of his own—and Roman lowers his gaze to eye his handiwork up close. A bruise has flowered around the puncture wound, a riot of blue and violet against Peter’s pale neck. The evidence of his hunger—of Peter’s willingness to be claimed—stirs the upir in Roman, has him pressing Peter even more firmly against him, his half-hard cock digging into Peter’s back next to where he’s still gripping Peter’s wrists.

He smells the shift in Peter, the wolf rising to the surface, the desire to fight or fuck warring in his veins. Strength-wise, they are an equal match—Peter could easily free himself from Roman’s grasp if he wanted to. So the fact that he doesn’t, that, instead, he presses back against Roman, eyes fluttering shut as Roman ghosts his lips against Peter’s neck, makes Roman heady, makes him breathe out one long, slow breath just to feel Peter shiver against him.

This time, there’re no teeth when he finally presses his mouth against skin, tastes the salt of Peter’s sweat as he licks a line right down to his pulse point, kisses the stripe he left behind.

Peter trembles against him, hands twisting in Roman’s grip. Roman’s right hand dips and brushes below the waistband of Peter’s jeans, fingertips dancing against the seam of Peter’s briefs. Roman knows the gut-clench of that urge—of the desire to take and conquer—and he laughs softly against Peter’s neck.

“Mmm,” Roman hums, lips tracing a journey from behind Peter’s ear down to the curve of his shoulder. “You need to learn patience, Rumancek.”

“Godfrey! You—” but whatever Peter was going to say is cut off in a moan as Roman’s hand slips inside, palm rubbing against the feverish skin of Peter’s cock.

Peter’s jeans are far too tight for Roman to have any real room to move his hand, but he doesn’t unzip him. He likes Peter’s desperation—the feel of him minutely circling his hips against the firm press of Roman’s palm, his breathy whines and moans as he builds his own friction, the sensation of two pairs of jeans scratching against Roman’s cock.

Roman has no idea how long the moment stretches, how long he loses himself to being consumed by the scent and sound and feel of his wolf. But he knows the moment Peter’s stomach clenches, the moment before the moment of Peter’s release, and he drops his mouth to Peter’s neck—sucking at the bruise he left behind—and feels the skin grow hotter as the blood rises to the surface, as Peter spills into his fist, as Roman marks something far deeper than his flesh.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More smut angst (smangst?).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I continue to take all kinds of liberties with these boys. It still bothers me that Roman's mind-warpy thing disappears after season 1 so I brought it back in part 2 and morphed it into telepathy of a sort. Also, this is once again canon adjacent. No Miranda, no trying to save Peter from turning into a vargulf. I think most of season 2 still applies though... probably?
> 
> P.S. And the hugest thanks and squeezes to all of you who have left such lovely comments and spurred me on to actually keep writing this thing. This is my first AO3 post and to be met with such love fills me li'l heart with warmth!

“You need to feed.”

Peter’s words bring them back—same moment, different time. This merry-go-round of de ja vu, new moon cycling through gibbous and coming out full. 

They’ve been here before.

A child in danger, an evil somehow darker than an upir in the throes of bloodlust and a werewolf who can’t control his turn. And so the earth spins and the ouroboros eats its tail. Only difference is this time the child is Nadia.

Peter stands— _gingerly_ —puts his weight on the leg those masked bastards didn’t break. One arm wrapping tight around his middle (two— _nope_ —three broken ribs knitting back together), he takes a cautious step away from Roman’s sofa.

The upir is frozen with his back against his own front door. Still in his hospital gown, IV tube swaying from his forearm, Roman is somehow an even more ghostly white than usual. Peter knows Roman is supposed to be getting his final gene therapy treatment from Pryce right now (how he thought he could hide it from Peter when they share the same dreams woefully laughable). And, yet, he would have honored it, would have kept silent and let Roman mutate himself if it would have colored in the shadows beneath his eyes, smoothed the taut muscles of his Jack Skellington body.

But that luxury is gone.

With each step closer to Roman, fragments of the past twenty-four hours spin through Peter’s mind like playing cards clothes-pinned to a bicycle wheel: Roman’s lips against his neck, long-fingered hand gripping his swollen cock. Startling into alertness together in Roman’s bed, their shared dream slotting the last puzzle piece into place. The drive to the boy’s house to find his bedroom flooded with bees—the cloud of them so thick he had to feel his way toward the boy by his screams. Roman bundling him in a blanket and thrusting him into his mother’s arms—chasing after Peter as Peter chased the almost-murderers into the woods.

(And Roman by his side, step-for-step, a long-legged shadow.)

Peter’s bones sawtoothing through muscle, flesh peeling away like the skin of overripe fruit as he shed his human form. The masked man’s jugular bursting between his jaws: a blood-filled water balloon.

(The words Roman shouted to him as he ran. The ones Peter couldn’t hear but his wolf could— imprinted them like a scent memory—“Don’t think you have to do this alone!”)

Two bodies. Their blood bright as one of Destiny’s scarves across the snow. The sheriff. Escape. And Destiny herself—calling on whatever-powers-that-be she has on cosmic speed dial to locate the masked cult’s hideout.

A lifetime lived in a day.

(Correction: two lifetimes. Both spent.)

Peter’s in front of Roman now yet the upir hasn’t moved. Half-bent at the waist, right arm crossed over his stomach—Peter’s memory snags on another image of Roman like this.

Lanky frame coiled against the stone wall in front of the school, a tongue of cigarette smoke unfurling from the side of his mouth. Roman set that smug, unerring stare on Peter—and Peter stared back.

(A thrill like a fingernail dragging across his nape shivered through him then—does so again now. Does every time Roman looks at him like there is nothing else worth looking at.)

They give each other the onceover.

Roman: Snow White pale, eyes sunken skull-like, a lick of blood seeping from the spot where he is pulling out the IV needle.

Peter: a collar of ruby red abrasions from where the neck trap had dug into his skin, his green shirt turned nearly black with blood. He coughs and the rattle against his broken ribs sends him wheezing.

“Sheee-it.”

They say it at the same time and it seems to turn the key in the lock—free the caution marooned inside.

Roman knots his fingers in Peter’s hair, laughing, tugs until their foreheads meet. “You look like shit, Rumancek.”

It would sound like the way they spoke to each other before—like no more than friendly teasing—if Peter couldn’t feel Roman’s fingers trembling or his concern dripping like melted wax against his skin.

Peter flushes. He wants to tip forward, bury his head in the crook of Roman’s neck. Feel his pulse beneath that tissue paper skin. He wants to curl up into him like a cat seeking warmth, feel that long skeleton arm hug him close.

(He wants to kiss Roman, grab him by the front of his hospital gown and drag him to the floor, suck his bottom lip red.)

Roman holds him there, grip on his hair loose but steady.

Peter’s heart thumps. He doesn’t understand this thing between them—or if it’s a thing at all. Maybe it’s just bloodlust for Roman. A home delivery.

With Letha, love was simple and sweet. Candy-flavored lipgloss kisses and nighttime movies on the couch. Clean sheets and shared fries and twilit walks through the park.

But with Roman, it’s a steady heat, burner on simmer, embers glowing blood-orange just waiting for a breath to wake them up.

Peter pushes his head forward to gently knock against Roman’s. He can feel the tension in the upir’s body, the white-knuckle grip on control. “You need to feed,” Peter repeats, softly. “You need your strength.”

Roman’s fingers tense where they’re still curled in his hair, but he doesn’t respond.

Peter wants to laugh. Roman’s pathological need for control—for sighting every square inch of his life as though through a sniper’s rifle—means he sometimes fails to see what’s right in front of him. Peter keeps his forehead pressed against Roman’s and closes his eyes, counts his exhales until his breath slows. He turns down the white noise of worry and fear, focuses on the warm thrum beneath his skin.

In his mind’s eye, he goes back: before Roman’s bedroom, before Nadia and Letha. Before the vargulf. To a desire codified in blue ink on a scrap of old notebook paper soft as worn jeans: _Can I watch_? He remembers his stomach dropping, arousal flooding the space left behind. (He hadn’t dared look at Roman over the row of desk chairs, terrified the lust would have sprouted on his face like acne.)

Peter’s face grows hot and he buries that part of the memory under a new one. Focuses on the feeling that came after—when he told Roman _yes_. When he felt that matchflame of hope that maybe he didn’t need to carry around this burden of being a freak alone.

Peter can feel Roman’s consciousness scratching at the edge of his own, a hound seeking out a scent. They’ve never done this before—Peter had a strict “Fuck no!” rule when it came to letting upirs crawl inside his head—but he needed Roman to know it was okay. That Peter wasn’t offering him his blood out of fear or even convenience. It was an act of _care_.

Roman’s consciousness nudges against his and he holds back the instinct to block him out. He takes a few deep breaths and feels Roman slip inside. It’s a strange sensation—like a rubber band being pulled taut and let go.

When the dizziness clears, they’re in Destiny’s living room. Peter—other Peter—is sprawled in an armchair, unlit cigarette dangling from two fingers. He’s a little younger, a little scruffier. Destiny’s on the other side of the room, behind the sofa, arms crossed and glaring that big sister glare he pretends to hate. “There’s this _thing_ ,” other Peter says— _said_ —glancing at Destiny through a safety curtain of hair. “I don’t know… we have the same dreams.”

Peter can’t see Roman, but he can feel him—can feel the moment he realizes other Peter is talking about them. When Destiny’s expression softens and she moves forward to put a comforting hand on his younger self’s knee—her voice rueful when she says, “Oh, sweetie… You’ve never had a real friend before.” It isn’t a question.

Then they’re back in the world—the one with human monsters and death threats and Roman’s daughter’s life on a timer.

Roman pulls back so their foreheads are no longer touching, tips Peter’s face up. He searches for something in Peter’s eyes and Peter holds his gaze, his heart drumming a steady _yes yes yes_ …

Roman must smell it—the yearning and submission rolled together like the fine point of a joint. Neither of them blink.

Peter can see the moment Roman gives in—when his eyes flash obsidian and his hand clenches in Peter’s t-shirt. Not even a breath is spared before Roman’s flipped their positions, has Peter pressed back against the glass door.

His heart thunders beneath Roman’s hand, starbursts of pain from his shattered ribs distracting him for a moment. Then Roman’s fist unclenches from his shirt, slides up Peter’s shoulder to cradle his face. He tilts Peter’s head one way, then the other, thumb stroking across his jawbone.

Peter feels foggy with lust. He wonders if his veins glow Technicolor to his upir, if the throb of his pulse beckons like a bent finger.

Roman holds Peter’s head still. Then he drops to his knees.

“Wha—, what are…?” Peter gasps, the movement sending his body trembling.

Roman has his hands on either side of Peter’s hips, long thumbs kneading circles. He looks up at Peter—his smile villainous—and hooks a finger in Peter’s belt loop, tugs the waistband down until Peter’s hipbone is exposed, until his jeans catch against the tent of his erection.

Without breaking eye contact, Roman presses a kiss to Peter’s hip, runs his tongue across the jut of bone. Roman’s eyes are liquid black, glistening like a moonlit reflection, like a pool whose calm surface belies its depth.

He licks a path to a fleshy part of muscle just beside the bone and opens his mouth. Sucks a bruise into Peter’s skin, his chin brushing the worn denim stretched over Peter’s cock. Peter gasps at the slight friction, gooseflesh pebbling his stomach where it’s exposed to the cool air.

There’s a pause, a heartbeat, where he swears he can feel Roman smile against his skin before his fangs pierce the surface, sink into the tender flesh. It’s a simmer turned to boil, an electric shock a livewire running straight to Peter’s cock.

He looks down and his vision goes fuzzy: Roman on his knees, his lips stretched and swollen. Roman flicks his gaze up and catches his eye, pulls back slightly so Peter can see the grin widen on his face. The trickle of blood run down his chin.

Peter’s cock twitches in response, pearling pre-cum, and his face reddens. He knows Roman can smell it—can probably feel his length against the hand still twisted in his waistband. He places a hand on Roman’s shoulder, wills himself to push Roman away.

But Roman chooses that moment to suck harder, to use his right hand to tug on Peter’s belt loop again, nudge it a millimeter lower. A low groan escapes Peter’s mouth unbidden—and it only grows as Roman’s left hand pops open the button on his jeans, pulls his zipper down. As a long fingered hand slips into his briefs and grips his cock without preamble.

Peter’s neck snaps back like a broken PEZ dispenser, shock momentarily knocking him breathless. Roman grips him just tightly enough to gather friction, thumbnail skating across the head on every upstroke. He strips Peter’s cock in rhythm with his tongue as it laves across Peter’s hipbone, kisses the tender flesh just below the nadir.

His body responds on its own, hips thrusting forward into Roman’s hand. He can no longer tell if his eyes are open or closed—vision long since gone white. Some part of his brain is still attempting order. Still trying to memorize the vision of Roman prostrate, of the way his tongue feels drawing figure eights into his side and the glint of his gaze when Roman’s feeling particularly smug. He wants to hold this moment still and hoard it, store it away in the faded shoebox where he keeps the picture of a teenage Lynda with flowers in her braids and the friendship bracelet Jenna gave him when they were six (before she knew he was a gypsy).

But all too soon he feels himself getting closer. One more down and up slide of Roman’s hand, thumb running across the slit, and he’s coming, spilling into Roman’s fist, a hoarse shout punched out of him. But Roman doesn’t yet let go, squeezes a few more drops from the tip as he sucks one last time on his flesh, licks a spare rivulet of blood dripping down his hipbone.

Roman stands nonchalantly. Runs his thumb across his bottom lip to suck any lost drops of blood inside.

Peter stares at him open-mouthed, heaving, jeans still around his knees. “Wha… why?”

Roman takes a step forward, brackets Peter’s head with a hand against the wall on either side. He gives Peter a casual shrug.

“The blood—it tastes different. Sweeter. When someone comes.”

Peter's heart hammers. If he had enough blood left to blush, he would have. Instead, he swallows. Musters his last ounce of courage. “Was that the only reason?”

Roman cocks his head to the side, looks at him for a breath. Then his right hand lifts off the wall. He curls a stray strand of Peter’s hair around his forefinger, tucks it behind his ear. Smiles.

“No, not the only reason,” Roman says and leans in. He kisses the corner of Peter’s mouth, leaves a bloody lip-print behind.


End file.
